I met with Garyvee and asked him about the Law of Category

This is a guest post that first appeared on thenextweb.com. Here are my written thoughts on it. (Summary at the end)

What’s the name of the third person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo?

Do you know it? I didn’t. The real question is that how hard is to figure out what our strength are. This is what Gary Vaynerchuck adviced me: it doesn’t matter how many things you are good at. What matters is that you figure that out and use your strength.

In other words, finding your differentiators can help you stand out of the crowed. Think about it, if you are doing what everyone else is doing, you are approaching it in a completely wrong way – Casey Neistat . “You realize that you will never be the best-looking person in the room. … A true egalitarian aspect to success, is hard work. Always work harder than the next guy.”

Amelia Earhart. You might have heard this name before. Now, the real question is the context. Is Amelia known as the third person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo? Of course not, but as the first woman to do so.

If you are good at one or two things, all you need to do is finding an unique angle, thus creating your own category.

The good news is, that finding this new category where you will be first in is not at all as difficult as you might think. How, you ask? If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in. When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not “How is this new product different or better than the competition?” To put it In other words, what category is your product first in?

With my company, SpringTab, we found that SpringTab is the first promotion tool by a digital consulting firm that is easy-to-use thanks to its data gathering to provide converting personalized experience in onsite and retargeting.

Most companies focus on why their brand is better. But people are interested in what’s new. After all, who is interested in what’s better? So find it and then #educate the market.

It doesn’t take much planning, if you aim for average with pleasant success in life. All you have to do is stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something greater, something extraordinary, your options come down to two:
Become the best in the world at one specific thing
Find your strength and become pretty good – like top 25% – at two or more things

Take Scott Adams’ case. He was the funny kid in the school, but wouldn’t make it as a standup comedist. His drawing skills are better than most people’s, but is not an artist or a graphic designer. The magic happens in the intersection of these two skills. Plus Scot having a business background helped him connect the dots and play on his strength of being among the few people who can draw well and write jokes.

Same analogy I can apply to myself and why vlogging came easy for me, is thanks to my background in photography and story telling. I’m not at all the best at capturing something visually, and definitely not the best storyteller. But I believe that being in the top 25% supports me to create outstanding audiovisual narratives by combining the two skills.

Here is another example. You can become a good public speaker (top 25%) and add that talent to any other skill, and bamm you overtake people focusing on only one skill.

Here is the secret hack.It is way easier to reach the top 25% and it requires way less energy.

The man himself, Marc Andreessen said that even the secret formula to becoming a CEO is this. All successful CEOs are like this. Just look at it from an educational standpoint. The unusual is getting usual of having combinations of degrees: engineering + MBA, or law degree + MBA.

“Everything is a remix, but what is your version of the remix?” – Chase Jarvis

Let me inspire you with the help of these stories.

Miller Lite.Heineken was already a big success. So instead of competing with a high-priced imported beer, by being a high-priced domestic beer, they positioned themselves as thefirst domestic light. There was a twist to the story, when Amstel Light became the first imported light beer. There is always a next twist where you can be first at.

IBM and DEC. IBM was first in computers. DEC was first in minicomputers. Instead of selling its products, DEC was education on why the market needs minicomputers.They told propects, they have to bugy a minicomputer, not a DEC product. Needless to say, when the decision was made, DEC was the goto option.

In the early days, Hertz sold rent-a-car service. Coca-Cola sold refreshment.

Tim Ferriss created the phrase “lifestyle design”: “The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan [save and retire after 20–40 years] and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility. This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design (LD). . . . $1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows. The question is then, How can one achieve the millionaire lifestyle of complete freedom without first having $1,000,000?” (Excerpt From: Timothy Ferriss. “Tools of Titans.”)

He owned the mindshare, the mental “category,” not the trademark.

Success is you make your own slot.

The great temptation that people have is they want to be someone else, they want to be in someone else’s movie. But, “How do you zig when everyone else is zagging?” A cool example is Chase Jarvis, who was transparent before it was “cool”.

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Meeting with Gary was just like watching his videos, but 100x. There was nothing new under the sun, but the way he put it and tailored it to me one-on-one, that made a huge difference for me. Keywords:
Numbers game
Patience
Emphaty
Document the authentic
Follow your target group on Instagram, find out what they are interested in and create content around it. Jab jab jab hook!

What this means to me that since I made a decision in terms of where my life should lead and be in the next few years, all I need is do the hard work, play the numbers game, so with patience I’ll find the right fits. I should and started to feel emphaty for the ones who don’t stay in my life. They must have their own reason, it is not my job to analyze it. May it be, NEXT. I started to document my journey throughout a weekly vlog, because I wish to show my ups and downs with all the inspiration I found relevant.
I created 3 parts of the experience, below you find the one where I actually met him. If you are hard core and have cca 12 minutes, whatch the three:

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Thanks for reading so far. Do you have any other cool inspirations like the ones above? I’d like to create a collection so if you have a good story or your own example, please share it in the comments or at peter@szanto.co.

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About Péter Szántó

I’m a creative individual, speaker, photographer, CEO of B Creative, and Founder of SpringTab My team & I help Content Provider Brands with better Business Intelligence and Personalization. You can find me on the streets of Budapest, Los Angeles.